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This story of 3 bears doesn’t end too happily
State-ordered killings in NJ. have reignited a controversy over how best to settle bear vs. human
confrontations.
Toni Cal/as, Don Sapatkin. Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia, Pa.: May21, 2006. pg. B.1
Full Text (1058 words)
Copyright Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. 2006
“I was helping my daughter get dressed for her party,” Spirko said, recalling the 2003 encounter. “My son came running into the bedroom screaming, ‘There’s a bear at the door.’
“I have”never been so scared in my life,” said Spirko, still shaken as she recalled how she and her children escaped the clumsy bruin through a window.
State game officials later killed the bear in a scenario likely to occur more often in New Jersey under a state rule that requires the killing of bears found in densely populated areas.
In less than three weeks this month, three bears - including a 153-pound youngster - wandered into urban areas and were killed as part of the state’s zero-tolerance bear-management policy. The casualties have reignited a long- smoldering controversy about how to settle bear vs. human confrontations in America’s most densely populated state.
New Jersey is the only state to make a policy of killing bears that wander into heavily populated areas called bear- exclusion zones. If bears won’t leave those zones, game officials shoot them with tranquilizer darts and later euthanize them.
Before the policy took effect in 2005, bears could only be killed for threatening humans. That wasn’t enough to keep bears out of cities.
“The bear areas in New Jersey are full, and other states don’t want them,” said Ernest Hahn, chairman of the New Jersey Fish and Game Council, which oversees the state’s wildlife regulations. “So we have to put them down.”
The Fish and Game Council reaffirmed the policy two weeks ago after authorities killed bears in Trenton and lrvington. On Wednesday, authorities captured a young bear in Millburn, 30 minutes from Manhattan, and later killed it.
Lauren E. Nolfo-Clements, a wildlife scientist for the Humane Society of the United States, said the state policy is “basically a lot of bunk.”
The Humane Society and the New Jersey Sierra Club asked Gov. Corzine to suspend or revise the policy. The governor refused to side with activists, saying public safety is more important than bears.
Activists say there are alternatives.
Nolfo-Clements said states should train animals and people to live with each other. People should get stronger education about the perils of putting garbage, bird feeders and pet food outside. Bears, said Nolfo-Clernents, should be trained to stay away from people with tactics that include rubber bullets.
“This is a point I’ve always tried to make: Once you kill an animal, it has not learned anything from the experience because it’s dead,” Nolfo-Clements said.
State Department of Environmental Protection officials said no-kill tactics don’t do enough to control the surging bear population.
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Most bears live in northwestern New Jersey, but they’ve been seen in all 21 counties. One surfaced last week in
North Hanover, Burlington County. Parts of Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Salem, Atlantic, and Cape May
Counties include bear-exclusion zones.
There has never been a bear sighting in Philadelphia, as far as Mark Ternent, a black-bear biologist for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, knows. Ternent said the 225-pound male that ambled into Trenton on May 6 was tagged in Monroe County, which is “the core of the Pocono bear range.”
The bear denned under a house in Stroud Township six weeks before it was killed. Wildlife conservation officers tagged it after the home’s resident complained and relocated the bear to Tunkhannock Township.
From there, the bear traveled more than 100 miles, making his way across the Delaware River to Carroll Street, one block from the DEP offices in Trenton.
“They’re trying to avoid interactions with other adult males that are more intimidating, so that’s why they try to find unusual areas,” said Ternent, explaining why bears frequently travel long distances this time of year.
Bears often cross from Pennsylvania to New Jersey, though officials say it’s more common for Jersey bears to head to Pennsylvania. The states’ wildlife agencies have very different views of how to balance science against the strongly held and often competing views of their constituents.
In February, while New Jersey was debating the ethics of hunting bears, Pennsylvania was heralding its all-time record for bear-hunting kills. And while Pennsylvania has held 96 hunts since 1905 with the exception of four years, New Jersey has held two in the last 30 years.
New Jersey Assemblyman Michael J. Panter (D., Monmouth-Mercer) agrees with the governor that public safety is the priority. But he said the zero-tolerance policy should go.
His idea is to change the state Fish and Game Council, which now has 11 members - six hunters, three farmers and two fishermen. Panter’s bill would cut the membership to seven and “allow the governor to appoint whoever he feels is qualified, even if they don’t fall in those groups,” Panter said.
“Whether its about exclusion zones or letting a hunt go forward, I just don’t think there is faith in the group right now,” he said.
Len Wolgast, the outspoken Fish and Game Council member who called the killing of the Trenton bear unnecessary, said the same thing about Panter’s bill.
“There is a representative for the general public already on the council,” said Wolgast, a retired Rutgers University biologist who hunts, fishes and farms. “So there is no need to change it.”
While environmentalists and politicians squabble, most New Jersey residents just want to keep bears out of their backyards.
Margo Spilotras, who lives in Vernon, remembers hearing a ripping, crashing sound while she was taking a shower last June and finding a mother bear and her cub eating cookies and cereal on her kitchen floor. She threw her shoe at the mother bear,
“I probably should have run out the front door,” Spilotras said.
The bears fled. But as Spilotras tried to close her sliding glass door, the mother bear tried to get back inside. “I was terrified,” she said.
Police killed the bear cub.
This spring, Spilotras said she has seen another bear walking through her yard. She’s wary. She doesn’t want to see all of New Jersey’s bears killed, but she doesn’t want them in her backyard.
“You see we have trouble out here,” Spilotras said. “In an urban area - sheesh - there is going to be a problem,” she said. “I just think, maybe, there are just too many bears.”
Contact staff writer Toni Callas at 856-779-3912 or tcallas©phillynews.com.
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Credit: Toni Callas and Don Sapatkin INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
Indexing (document details)
Author(s): Toni Callas, Don Sapatkin
Section; SOUTH JERSEY AND THE REGION
Publication title: Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia, Pa.: May 21, 2006. pg. B.1
Source type: Newspaper
ISSN: 08656613
ProQuest document ID: 1343031961
Text Word Count 1058
Document URL: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?didl 343031961 &sid=1 9&Fmt3&c lientld=1 0329&RQTh309&VName=PQD
Copyright © 2010 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved.
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Family 2
Document Page: Bears get bolder in search for food Page 1 of 3
Bears get bolder in search for food
RICHARD COWEN, STAFF WRITERThe Record (Bergen County, NJ)
10-06-2008
Bears get bolder in search for food - Serious complaints doubled in last year
By RICHARD COWEN, STAFF WRITER
Date: 10-06-2008, Monday
Section: LOCAL
Edtion: All Editions
Black bears have become an increasing nuisance this year, breaking into homes, damaging property and overturning trash cans in their never-ending quest for survival in the back yards of suburbia, a state report shows.
As of Sept. 20, the state had recorded 2,155 bear complaints an increase of 84 percent from the same period a year ago. Even more troubling is the fact that the most serious complaints the so-called Category 1 incidents in which bears threaten humans or property have more than doubled, from 87 to 203.
The number of home entries has more than doubled to 65, suggesting that some bears have become increasingly aggressive in searching for food. The state has also euthanized 25 bruins this year for aggressive behavior up from 18 a year ago.
Larry Herrighty, the assistant director of the state Division of Fish and Wildlife, says there have been more bears and less food in the forests, so the drive to survive brings the animals to back yards in search of food.
“There was a widespread acorn crop failure this year,” Herrighty said. “That means bears have been on the move. The increase is due to a population increase combined with environmental factors.”
The sharp spike in complaints has raised concerns that New Jersey’s current preference for non-lethal strategies of bear control may not be working. Last year, environmental Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson rebuffed the state Fish and Game Council and refused to allow a bear hunt so as to give non-lethal strategies such as public education and trash law enforcement more time to work.
DEP spokeswoman Darlene Yuhas said Jackson remains committed to giving non-lethal strategies time to work. Herrighty said the state isn’t sure how many bears are in New Jersey. The state gathers most of its data in two of the four prime bear habitats in northwestern New Jersey, where the population is estimated at 1,885 bears.
“We’re not sure how many bears there are, but they have been spotted in all 21 counties in the state,” Herrighty said.
New Jersey has a “Don’t Feed the Bears” law on the books, in which property owners are subject to a fine of up to $1,000 for intentionally or unintentionally feeding the bears. The law doesn’t require that
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property owners use bear-proof critter cans, only that they maintain their garbage in such a way that bears can’t get in it.
But the law has rarely been enforced since its inception in 2004. It requires state conservation officers to give property owners a warning first, and they can only issue a summons if they return to the property a second time.
This year, the state has issued 20 warnings to suspected violators but only two summonses, according to statistics supplied by the DEP.
The effectiveness of bear-proof cans is being studied in West Milford, which is participating in the DEP largest study of non-lethal controls. The DEP last year distributed 3,000 bear-proof trash cans to 1,500 homeowners in five sections of the township. The DEP is analyzing whether blanketing a neighborhood with bear-proof cans actually decreases the number of bear complaints.
Hunters, meanwhile, plan to use the latest spike in bear complaints as ammunition in their legal fight to force another bear hunt in 2009. The New Jersey State Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs last week voted to allow its legal counsel to explore reopening a lawsuit against the DEP.
Ed Markowski, the vice president of the federation, said bear-proof cans are not the solution to a rising bear population.
“If you cut them off the garbage can, then they go into the garage,” Markowski said. “We feel there isn’t any way to reduce the number of black bears in New Jersey without a hunt, If there’s no birth control and no disease, how else are you going to control them than a hunt?”
E-mail: cowen@northjersey.com
Keywords: ANIMAL, HAZARD
Copyright © 2008 Bergen Record Corp. All rights reserved.
Citation for your reference:
RICHARD COWEN, STAFF WRITER. “Bears get bolder in search for food.” Record (Bergen County, NJ). 06 Oct. 2008: LOl. eLibraay. Web. 24 May. 2010.
RICHARD COWEN, STAFF WRITER. “Bears get bolder in search for food.” Record (Bergen County, NJ). 06 Oct. 2008: LOl,
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